Is not our French Sudan just such a fertile colony as is well suited for playing a part in what I may call the future social policy of France? I can answer that question in a very few words.
MEDAL OF THE ‘SOCIETÉ D’ALLIANCE FRANÇAISE.’
I have visited the lower course of the river, with the districts under the control of the Royal Niger Company, and I can confidently assert that except for palm-oil, which is only to be obtained on the seaboard, none of the exports, gum, india-rubber, ivory, and above all, karité, are wanting in the French Sudan. In fact, we have all these things in greater quantities than the English, without counting the products peculiar to our districts, but unknown at the mouth of the river.
Let us then make that railway, and make it quickly. Do not let us waste any more time talking about it; do not let us turn aside for any other projects, and when some 373 miles of iron road unite some 622 miles of the navigable Senegal, with no less than 1056 miles of the Niger, all alike fit to be navigated by our boats, we shall have a second Algeria, larger and richer than the first. The mind can scarcely grasp the idea of the new source of fortune to be opened to France by a thing so simple as this, a thing in which the Belgians have been beforehand with us—the construction of a railway. Stanley was right when he said Africa would belong to the first who should lay down a line of railway through it.[12]
This will bring us to Ansongo. Are we to let it be the limit of our zone of trading operations? No, certainly not; and this brings me to a second result won by our expedition: the opening of relations with the Awellimiden.
I have constituted myself the defender of the Tuaregs. I have shown them to be less cruel, less traitorous, less hostile to progress than they are generally said to be. It is for the reader to judge whether the adventures I have related do or do not prove my impressions to have been correct.
One thing, however, I must stipulate, and that is: if we let months or years slip by without improving the relations opened with the Tuaregs of the Niger by further contact with them, we shall find them more difficult to deal with, more suspicious, altogether less accessible than we did during our stay in their country.
As I have already said, the Azgueurs were in our hands after the journey of Duveyrier. Ikhenukhen, their great chief, who was honoured and obeyed by them, was our friend. When the treaty of Rhâdames was made, we said to them, “We want to go to the Sudan by way of Aïr: you will guide us, you will protect our traders, you will hire your camels to us, and you will find it to your profit to do so.”
A Tuareg proverb says, “You should never promise more than half what you mean to perform.”